Underwater creatures and medieval knights might seem unlikely themes for an exhibition of contemporary art, but the Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill is filled with works inspired by fish, suits of armor and intersections of the two. “Tandem Pursuits: Armor & Ichthyology” presents pieces in a range of media, from intricate watercolors of fanciful fish, to aluminum sculptures suggestive of codpieces, to a video documenting a dress that inflates like a blowfish when its wearer feels threatened.

“Tandem Pursuits” is the second in a series of programs and exhibitions at Wave Hill, a former Bronx estate that is now a 28-acre public garden, paying tribute to former residents. The show’s title refers to the professions and passions of Bashford Dean, who lived in Wave Hill House, one of the homes on the property, from 1909 until his death in 1928. An ichthyologist specializing in placoderms, or armored fish, Dean was also an enthusiastic collector of armor. He was concurrently the first curator of fish at the American Museum of Natural History and the founding curator of the arms and armor department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (“Bashford Dean and the Creation of the Arms and Armor Department” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum through the fall of 2014 to commemorate the department’s centennial.)

Visitors to the Georgian Revival-style Glyndor Gallery, another former home at Wave Hill, will encounter an intriguing assortment by 16 artists ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s. “I like to think these are works that Bashford Dean himself might have chosen,” said Jennifer McGregor, Wave Hill’s director of arts and senior curator.

He probably would have been taken by Holly Sumner’s two large-scale illustrations of radiolaria, tiny ocean zooplankton with spiky exoskeletons. And he might have been surprised to learn that she pursued dual interests akin to his.

At the time Ms. Sumner started drawing radiolaria, she was also exploring the armor galleries at the Metropolitan Museum. She was particularly enamored with the samurai suits and couldn’t help noticing their similarities to her subject matter. She called the figures in her drawings “my samurai radiolaria.”

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“Blowfish Dress,” by Amisha Gadani.CreditCourtesy of Amisha Gadani

Other works in the exhibition also evoke Dean’s parallel careers. WonJung Choi’s “Fearless,” a site-specific installation in a fireplace, is composed of nine hanging fish crafted from metal, including chain mail. Three prints by Marina Zurkow, from her series “Heraldic Crests for Invasive Species,” whimsically reimagine traditional coats of arms. In her designs, fish and other creatures broadcast messages of environmental rather than military conquest. In Carol Hepper’s abstract painting “Percussion,” the canvas is stitched-together skins of sturgeons, ancient fish with thorny protrusions and bony plates instead of scales. Completed in 2000, it is part of a series of paintings on the skins of various fish. Ms. Hepper described sturgeon as the most resilient medium she worked with, adding, “Their abrasive surface wore my paintbrushes down quickly.”

Frank Gehry, the celebrated architect, once described the fish as “a perfect form.” In the mid-1980s, he created a series of “Fish Lamps,” commissioned by the Formica Corporation. The one displayed at Wave Hill curves gently, its scales made from shards of white plastic laminate outlined in light when the lamp is switched on.

Fish also served as muse for Ben Snead, who painted a portrait of Dean for “Tandem Pursuits” collaged from catfish, the focus of Dean’s doctoral thesis. Mr. Snead painted the fish from images in field guides, then photocopied them, cut them up and arranged them as a mock-up for the final piece. “I divided each fish into three sections: head, tail and body,” he said, explaining that he assigned specific parts to different areas of Dean’s face. “It’s my personal classification system, based on aesthetics rather than science.”

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A fish lamp, by Frank Gehry.CreditCollection of Emily Fisher Landau

In the painting, Dean appears virile and imposing, with heavy eyebrows and a jutting jaw. A different interpretation was conceived by Camilla Huey, a professional couturier (who has dressed the likes of Aretha Franklin and Katy Perry) and an artist who combines costumes and artifacts to build sculptural personifications of historical figures. For “Tandem Pursuits,” her subjects were Dean and his wife, Mary Alice Dyckman Dean.

Mrs. Dean’s portrait is a lacy, corseted garment, with Dean invoked by a fishbone emerging from the frilly neckline. For her “Bashford Dean Portrait” in a cabinet across the room, Ms. Huey constructed a jacket inspired by Japanese karuta kotes, padded coats covered with chain mail and lacquered leather that samurais wore beneath their armor. Referring to Dean’s ichthyologic achievements, the jacket is framed by a satin representation of oversize embryonic pectoral bones with fins that reach to the floor.

Wandering through the exhibition, gallerygoers are bound to find unexpected associations between fish and armor: the layers of articulated metal plates like scales, patterned and protective, hugging the body in motion. “It’s interesting to see the teasing out between the two,” Ms. McGregor said. “It’s not a natural connection, but once you delve into it, it starts to make sense.”